The congressional joint session to count electoral votes on Monday is expected to be much less eventful than the certification four years ago that was interrupted by a violent mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump who tried to stop the count and overturn the results of an election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. This time, Trump is returning to office after winning the 2024 election that began with Biden as his party’s nominee and ended with Vice President Kamala Harris atop the ticket. She will preside over the certification of her own loss, fulfilling the constitutional role in the same way that Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, did after the violence subsided on Jan. 6, 2021. Usually a routine affair, the congressional joint session on Jan. 6 every four years is the final step in reaffirming a presidential election after the Electoral College officially elects the winner in December. The meeting is required by the Constitution and includes several distinct steps. A look at the joint session: What happens when Congress meets? Under federal law, Congress must meet Jan. 6 to open sealed certificates from each state that contain a record of their electoral votes. The votes are brought into the chamber in special mahogany boxes that are used for the occasion. Bipartisan representatives of both chambers read the results out loud and do an official count. The vice president, as president of the Senate, presides over the session and declares the winner. The Constitution requires Congress to meet and count the electoral votes. If there is a tie, then the House decides the presidency, with each congressional delegation having one vote. That hasn’t happened since the 1800s, and won’t happen this time because Trump’s electoral win over Harris was decisive, 312-226. How has it changed since the last time? Congress tightened the rules for the certification after the violence of 2021 and Trump’s attempts to usurp the process. In particular, the revised Electoral Count Act passed in 2022 more explicitly defines the role of the vice president after Trump aggressivelypushed Pence to try and object to the Republican’s defeat — an action that would have gone far beyond Pence’s ceremonial role. Pence rebuffed Trump and ultimately gaveled down his own defeat. Harris will do the same. The updated law clarifies that the vice president does not have the power to determine the results on Jan. 6. Harris and Pence were not the first vice presidents to be put in the uncomfortable position of presiding over their own defeats. In 2001, Vice President Al Gore presided over the counting of the 2000 presidential election that he narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Gore had to gavel several Democrats’ objections out of order. In 2017, Biden as vice president presided over the count that declared Trump the winner. Biden also shot down objections from House Democrats that did not have any Senate support. How does the session unfold? The presiding officer opens and presents the certificates of the electoral votes in alphabetical order of the states. The appointed “tellers” from the House and Senate, members of both parties, then read each certificate out loud and record and count the votes. At the end, the presiding officer announces who has won the majority votes for both president and vice […]